1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to an apparatus and method of controlling a communication between objects using identification information of the objects.
2. Description of the Related Art
An existing information communication method has selected a route based on an address system of designating locations of communication objects that desire to exchange information, and has transferred information via the selected route.
Such information communication method may perform a communication based on a location of a communication object instead of directly selecting the communication object. Therefore, when the communication object moves or when the communication object has a plurality of addresses, it may be difficult to effectively cope with the above circumstance. Also, when a malicious communication object changes its address or informs the address untruthfully, a serious security issue, for example, a denial of service may occur.
Accordingly, a communication method using a location-independent globally unique identifier is one of influential methods that have been proposed to overcome the constraints in the location based address system. In the communication method, all of communication objects may perform communication based on an identifier designating a corresponding object, instead of an address based on a location of the corresponding object. Therefore, even though a communication object moves to another location, the communication object may have the same identifier at all times. Accordingly, a mobility issue may be solved. Since an identifier of directly designating a communication object is used, it is possible to solve a security issue that may occur using a false identifier.
When configuring a communication method using a globally unique identifier in an actual communication network, a transmitting communication object may require a technology of fining a current location of a receiving communication object using a location-independent identifier for a communication with the receiving communication object. For example, the transmitting communication object may require a method of finding a telephone number with a name of a predetermined person to call the predetermined person.
For example, a method of finding a current location using an identifier may be a method of storing an identifier and current location pair in a database and retrieving the identifier and current location pair. However, in this method, when a number of identifiers increases to be at least a predetermined number, a performance may be seriously degraded. That is, an extensibility issue may occur.
To solve the extensibility issue, a grouping method having a hierarchical structure that may classify identifiers based on various criteria, assign an identifier to a group of classified identifiers, and enables the identifier group to belong to another identifier group may be proposed. A hierarchical identifier grouping method may solve the extensibility issue, however, may encounter a new issue that a group from which a given identifier is to be retrieved should be known.
Accordingly, there is a desire for a technology that may readily retrieve an identifier of a communication object from a hierarchically structured group.